Monday's hot topics - Happy Martin Luther King Day!

In God's providence I was down in Atlanta at the Martin Luther King memorial just last week. It was quite a moving experience, similar to the holocaust museum in Israel. I was overcome with feelings and thoughts that I had never experienced. "How did this happen", "Why", "Who would do something like that". I had experienced these all before but one emotion came up that I hadn't felt before, "Lord forgive me and my ancestors for my our attitude of collonial domination". I'd never really thought of how we as white, euros EXPECT things we don't even realize. We think we are civilized. We think we are the best. We think others need to become "like us" instead of "like Jesus". We came to Canada and booted the natives cause they were "not like us", not "people". The land was "uninhabited". Disgraceful.

Same with slavery. While we here in Canada have abolished slavery a long time ago, I saw things at the MLK jr. memorial that happened in very recent memory. Walking through the memorial I saw a picture that i will never forget - click here for my pictures. It was a picture of a lynching in Atlanta. A black man hanging. Whites all around. Little children watching. The thought that struck me was that the little children in that picture would still be alive today. Racism exists and we need to ask God's forgiveness for how it has affected our lives.

I didn't think it existed till I started at Bridlegrove and moved to Scarborough. People would say to me "Oh that's the black church"....Huh? Pardon? I felt like saying on many occasions "Do you attend a 'white's only' church"? I'm not saying that people do this on purpose but examine your heart to see what's inside.

So what are you doing to end racism? Do you live in a nice white picket-fence community? Are you segregated? Do you have friends of other ethnicities? Do you intentionally seek to break down those barriers? *Click here to post your thoughts on the forum

May God remove all racism, expressed or hidden, from us this day - Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2007